Our region’s very own “jungle” habitat
In the last couple of weeks I had the pleasure of accompanying a friend of mine in looking around a patch of private bushland in our region.
To my delight, when we arrived I discovered that there was quite a nice area of wet shrubland habitat (in SA commonly called silky tea-tree tall shrubland, in Victoria swamp scrub) for us to look around.
Once you enter under the canopy of this habitat, it is like entering another world. It’s shady, humid, often very thick, and is home to some very specialised plants and animals. They are all taking advantage of the fact that this habitat grows on peat which ordinarily stays saturated all year-round, and is responsible for maintaining this unusual micro-climate – even in the middle of a dry Australian summer. The jungle-like conditions mean that this habitat is not for an everyday bush-walk, but you can get a sense of what this habitat is like by visiting somewhere like Piccaninnie Ponds Conservation Park, near Nelson.
If you are particularly lucky, you might even find a fresh spring, as we did – flowing all year round. What a great way to round off our visit!
